What is the specific problem Carma is solving?

Carma addresses the 'profitability gap' in the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) Solar Home System (SHS) market. According to Slide 3, while these companies have high gross margins, their operating costs related to serving customers are so high that most were not EBITDA positive as of 2018. Carma provides the credit risk and payment infrastructure to lower these costs.

How does Carma make money?

The company uses a pay-as-you-go SaaS model. As detailed on Slide 10, they charge per-transaction fees such as $0.25 for underwriting data cross-validation, $0.50 for credit scores, and $0.05 for agent app transactions. They also charge license fees for call center agents ($900) and dispatchers ($1,000).

What are the projected unit economics for a customer using Carma?

Slide 7 provides a side-by-side comparison. Without Carma, a unit has a contribution margin of $9 (7%). With Carma's underwriting (UW), the default rate drops from 5% to 3%, and collection costs drop from $4 to $2, resulting in a contribution margin of $16 (13%).

Who is the founder and what is their track record?

The company was founded by Ted Martynov. Slide 11 highlights his experience as the co-founder and former CEO of SolarHome, a PAYGO leader in Southeast Asia that raised $6 million in equity and $10 million in debt. This background suggests deep operational knowledge of the exact customers Carma targets.

What is the fundraising ask in this deck?

Slide 12 outlines a multi-stage fundraising plan. It lists a Seed round of $136k to build the MVP (Underwriting + Call Center), followed by a Pre-Series A of $536k for payment solutions and routing, and finally a Series A of $413k to reach a projected $4.3M in revenue by month 36.

Carma Pitch Deck (2018): 13-Slide Seed Deck

See all 13 slides of the Carma pitch deck — a 2018 Seed deck in Fintech — with a slide-by-slide teardown of what the deck does well and where it falls short.

Carma's 13-slide deck addresses a specific pain point in the emerging markets solar sector: the lack of profitability due to high operating costs and credit risk. The company positions itself as a specialized SaaS layer for PAYGO companies, offering underwriting, payment processing, and collection tools. The deck is notable for its granular unit economics, comparing margins with and without their software, and a clear roadmap for fundraising across Seed, Pre-Series A, and Series A rounds. While the visual design is minimal, the data-heavy approach provides a clear argument for how their inter…

Key takeaways

The deck identifies a critical industry problem: PAYGO solar companies have high gross margins but are struggling to reach EBITDA positivity due to high operating costs (Slide 3).
Carma claims its underwriting software can nearly double contribution margins from 7% to 13% by reducing default rates and collection costs (Slide 7).
The market size projections are aggressive, forecasting annual unit sales growing from 230k in 2016 to over 64 million by 2025 (Slide 6).
The business model uses a granular pay-per-use structure, charging $0.25 for underwriting and $0.50 for credit scores per customer (Slide 10).
Founder Ted Martynov leverages his background as the former CEO of SolarHome, which raised $16M in equity and debt, to prove domain expertise (Slide 11).
The financial roadmap explicitly outlines three funding stages: a $136k Seed, a $536k Pre-Series A, and a $413k Series A (Slide 12).
The competitive analysis admits that while no direct credit risk competitors exist, BPM platforms like Angaza are potential threats (Slide 8).
The product suite extends beyond software into physical infrastructure, offering call-center facilities for unit repossession (Slide 9).

Executive Summary: The Infrastructure Layer for Emerging Market Energy

Carma's pitch deck is a focused, data-driven proposal for a B2B SaaS platform targeting the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) solar industry. The deck foregoes flashy design in favor of dense tables and industry-specific metrics. It positions the company not just as a software provider, but as a critical financial intermediary that enables solar providers to become profitable by managing the high risks associated with lending to unbanked populations in emerging markets.

Slide 1: Title and Identity

The cover slide introduces the company name, Carma, with the subtitle "credit risk management agency." The logo features a black cat silhouette, which is a play on the phonetic similarity to "karma," though the subtitle immediately grounds the company in the financial services sector. There is no tagline or mission statement here, keeping the focus entirely on the functional category of the business.

Slide 2: Purpose

Slide 2 provides a one-sentence elevator pitch: "CARMA provides credit risk management and payment software as a service for PAYGO companies." This is a textbook example of a clear purpose statement. It identifies the product (software), the delivery model (SaaS), the primary function (credit risk/payments), and the target audience (PAYGO companies).

Slide 3: The Profitability Problem

The problem slide uses an external citation from GOGLA (Global Off-Grid Lighting Association) from 2018 to establish credibility. The core issue is that PAYGO Solar Home System (SHS) companies are not yet profitable. While gross margins are high, the "operating costs related to serving PAYGO customers are also high, depressing EBITDA." This sets the stage for a solution that specifically targets operational efficiency and risk reduction rather than sales growth.

Slide 4: The Solution Suite

The solution is broken down into four functional pillars: data aggregation (collecting footprints from telecoms and loan records), underwriting/debt collection SaaS, data validity through cross-checking databases, and payment processing for top-up agents. This slide clarifies that Carma is a multi-module platform intended to handle the entire lifecycle of a PAYGO loan, from initial credit check to final collection.

Slide 5: Why Now - Market Momentum

This slide uses a map to show the concentration of PAYGO suppliers in Africa and Asia. Key data points include that over 40 players were present in 2017, with 10+ new startups going live every year. It notes a potential market of 2 million units sold annually. Crucially, it mentions Angaza as a successful CRM platform in the space to prove that SaaS solutions are already "conquering the market," suggesting a validated path for specialized tools like Carma.

Slide 6: Market Size Projections

Slide 6 presents a detailed table of market projections from 2016 to 2025. It forecasts the "Total Cost of Risk (COR)" growing from $9M to over $2.5B. Carma defines its Serviceable Addressable Market (SAM) as the COR for Tier 2+ players. The company aims for a 40% market share by 2023, which would represent a Serviceable Obtainable Market (SOM) of $302M by 2025. The slide notes a strategy of starting with Tier 2 companies and moving to Tier 1 after aggregating 30,000-50,000 data sets.

Slide 7: The Value Proposition (Unit Economics)

This is arguably the most important slide in the deck. It provides a side-by-side comparison of unit economics "No UW" (Underwriting) vs. "CARMA UW." By applying Carma's tools, the default rate is projected to drop from 5% to 3%, and the asset utilization rate rises from 75% to 85%. The result is a jump in contribution margin from 7% ($9) to 13% ($16). This 2x improvement in margin is the primary selling point for potential B2B customers.

Slide 8: Competition and Advantages

Carma claims there is "no direct competition for End-customer Credit Risk Management." It lists potential competitors like Angaza Design and Solaris Offgrid but categorizes them as BPM (Business Process Management) platforms. Carma argues its advantage is being "non-contradictory" to these platforms, meaning it can sit on top of existing CRMs. It also highlights its built-in call center and payment processing infrastructure as unique differentiators.

Slide 9: Product Deep-Dive

The product slide lists specific features: blacklists, credit scoring, digital routing for unit repossession, and a mobile app for top-up agents. By including "units repossession" and "call-center facilities," Carma signals that its solution includes an operational component, acknowledging that software alone cannot solve credit risk in markets where physical assets must be recovered.

Slide 10: Business Model and Revenue Mix

The business model is a granular fee structure. Revenue is split between Underwriting (33%), Payments (37%), Routing (20%), and Call-center (10%). The fees are small—$0.25 to $0.50 per customer—but the slide illustrates how these add up to $90,500 in revenue across a sample base of 30,000 customers. This demonstrates a clear path to scaling revenue alongside the customer's growth.

Slide 11: The Team and Track Record

The deck focuses entirely on founder Ted Martynov. His pedigree is strong: co-founder and former CEO of SolarHome. The slide lists SolarHome's achievements—430 employees, 30,000 customers, and $16M raised—to prove that the founder has already successfully built a company in the exact sector Carma is now serving. This reduces the "execution risk" in the eyes of an investor.

Slide 12: Financial Roadmap

The financial slide outlines three distinct phases. The Seed round ($136k) covers months 1-6 to build the MVP. The Pre-Series A ($536k) covers months 7-18 for the payment solution. The Series A ($413k) targets months 19-36. By month 36, the company projects $4.34M in revenue and $756k in EBITDA. The relatively small size of the Series A ($413k) compared to the Pre-Series A ($536k) is unusual and may suggest a typo or a very specific capital efficiency plan.

Slide 13: Contact Information

The final slide provides direct contact details for Ted Martynov, including a WhatsApp number and LinkedIn profile. It is a standard, functional closing slide.

What Works Well in This Deck

Specific Industry Insight: The deck identifies a very specific, high-value problem (EBITDA depression in PAYGO) that only an industry insider would fully appreciate. · Comparative Unit Economics: Slide 7 is a masterclass in showing value. By showing exactly how the product changes the bottom line for a customer, they move the conversation from "cost" to "ROI." · Founder-Market Fit: The founder's history with SolarHome is the strongest piece of evidence in the deck. It proves he understands the customer's pain points because he lived them as a CEO. · Granular Pricing: The business model slide shows that the founders have thought through every touchpoint where they can extract value without becoming a burden to the customer's cash flow.

What Is Missing or Could Be Improved

Visual Design: The deck is visually very plain, using standard fonts and basic tables. While the data is good, a more professional design could help convey the "tech" nature of the SaaS platform. · Team Depth: The team slide only mentions the founder. Investors usually want to see a CTO or a head of operations, especially for a product that involves complex data cross-validation and physical call centers. · Technology Detail: For a company claiming to use "non-proprietary data for cross-validation," there is very little detail on how the data is actually accessed or secured. In the fintech space, data privacy and API integrations are major hurdles. · Series A Logic: The fundraising table on Slide 12 shows a Series A round that is smaller than the Pre-Series A. This is counter-intuitive in venture capital and requires a clear explanation of why capital needs would decrease as the company scales.

Founder Lessons: What to Copy

Use the 'Side-by-Side' Value Prop: If your software saves money or increases efficiency, do not just say it—show the math. The table on Slide 7 is the most persuasive element of the entire deck. · Leverage External Reports: Using a GOGLA report to define the problem (Slide 3) makes the problem feel like an industry-wide truth rather than just the founder's opinion. · Define Your 'Why Now' with Market Saturation: Instead of just saying the market is big, Slide 5 shows that the market is maturing with 40+ players, creating a secondary market for infrastructure tools like Carma.

Frequently asked questions

What is the specific problem Carma is solving?: Carma addresses the 'profitability gap' in the Pay-As-You-Go (PAYGO) Solar Home System (SHS) market. According to Slide 3, while these companies have high gross margins, their operating costs related to serving customers are so high that most were not EBITDA positive as of 2018. Carma provides the credit risk and payment infrastructure to lower these costs.
How does Carma make money?: The company uses a pay-as-you-go SaaS model. As detailed on Slide 10, they charge per-transaction fees such as $0.25 for underwriting data cross-validation, $0.50 for credit scores, and $0.05 for agent app transactions. They also charge license fees for call center agents ($900) and dispatchers ($1,000).
What are the projected unit economics for a customer using Carma?: Slide 7 provides a side-by-side comparison. Without Carma, a unit has a contribution margin of $9 (7%). With Carma's underwriting (UW), the default rate drops from 5% to 3%, and collection costs drop from $4 to $2, resulting in a contribution margin of $16 (13%).
Who is the founder and what is their track record?: The company was founded by Ted Martynov. Slide 11 highlights his experience as the co-founder and former CEO of SolarHome, a PAYGO leader in Southeast Asia that raised $6 million in equity and $10 million in debt. This background suggests deep operational knowledge of the exact customers Carma targets.
What is the fundraising ask in this deck?: Slide 12 outlines a multi-stage fundraising plan. It lists a Seed round of $136k to build the MVP (Underwriting + Call Center), followed by a Pre-Series A of $536k for payment solutions and routing, and finally a Series A of $413k to reach a projected $4.3M in revenue by month 36.

Cover slide of the Carma pitch deck — Seed 2018 — Carma pitch deck, slide 1 (2018)

Carma pitch deck: the facts

Company: Carma
Year: 2018 (based…
Stage: Seed
Slides: 13
Sector: Fintech / Renewable Energy
Deck type: Fundraising Pitch
Outcome: Not stated
Headquarters: Ukraine (based on phone country code +380)

Carma pitch deck PDF

The full Carma deck is embedded on this page and can be read slide by slide in the browser — no download or account required. Each slide is covered in the breakdown above.

What the Carma pitch deck was used for

Carma’s 13-slide deck is a 2018 seed-stage fundraising deck for software and services aimed at PAYGO solar home system providers. The deck frames the company as a fintech/renewable-energy infrastructure play: it aggregates customer and loan data, offers underwriting and debt-collection software, and adds payment-processing and call-center tooling to reduce operating costs and default risk in PAYGO solar. The deck’s “why now” argument is that PAYGO was expanding quickly across markets such as Uganda, Côte d’Ivoire, and Pakistan, while software platforms like Angaza were proving the category.

What happened after the Carma deck

I found a live copy of the deck and a later company profile hinting at a substantially larger 2021 seed round, but I could not verify a specific fundraising outcome for the 2018 deck from the sources retrieved in this session. Because the company is obscure and externally verified funding details were not fully recoverable here, I am omitting round and outcome facts rather than guessing.

What the Carma deck got right

Clear economic pain point. The deck anchors the problem in a concrete industry pain point: PAYGO solar firms can have high gross margins but still struggle to reach EBITDA profitability because operating costs are high.
Product matches the problem. Carma’s solution is tightly aligned to that pain: underwriting, debt collection, payment processing, and call-center tooling rather than a generic CRM pitch.
Data-network approach. The deck claims a data advantage through aggregation and cross-checking across PAYGO companies, telecoms, and loan records, which is a believable infrastructure moat if executed well.
Timely market framing. The “Why Now” slide cites a growing number of PAYGO players and SaaS adoption, supporting a timing-based fundraising narrative.
Relevant founder background. The team slide, as surfaced in the search snippet, gives founder Ted Martynov relevant lending and startup experience plus prior SolarHome operating experience.
Low-friction positioning. The deck tries to position Carma as complementary to existing PAYGO BPM platforms, which could lower customer adoption barriers.

What could have been stronger

No verifiable traction in the visible slides. The deck makes a market and traction argument, but the OCR excerpt does not show hard operating proof such as paying customers, signed pilots, revenue, or collection-performance metrics.
Market sizing is asserted rather than fully evidenced. The “Why Now” slide cites market size and industry growth, but the OCR provides only partial figures and named players, leaving the underlying sizing methodology and data sources unclear.
Data-access and data-quality risk is underexplained. The differentiation claim depends on integration with multiple data sources and non-proprietary cross-validation, but the deck does not visibly explain data access rights, consent, or reliability constraints.
Scope looks broad for a seed-stage build. The solution spans underwriting, collections, payment processing, call-center infrastructure, and agent management, which creates a fairly broad product surface for a seed-stage company.
Competitive positioning is high level. The competition slide references several adjacent PAYGO BPM platforms but does not show a detailed feature-by-feature or economic comparison against existing incumbents.

How an investor would read this deck

What draws attention

Ted Martynov’s background in consumer lending and SolarHome is the clearest team signal visible in the deck.
The deck is targeting a real pain point in PAYGO solar: high operating costs and default risk suppressing EBITDA even when gross margins are attractive.
The pitch tries to turn fragmented PAYGO customer data into an underwriting and collections layer, which is a plausible infrastructure wedge if data access is durable.
The deck’s “why now” logic is tied to a visible expansion of PAYGO players and SaaS adoption in the sector.

Risks that stand out

The business depends on adoption by PAYGO providers that may already use other BPM/CRM systems.
Underwriting quality could be weak if customer data is incomplete, inconsistent, or inaccessible.
The deck’s broad product scope raises execution risk for a seed-stage team.
If collections support involves servicing debt or handling payments across jurisdictions, regulatory complexity may be material.

Questions this deck invites

What specific evidence existed at the time of the raise that Carma could reduce defaults or lower operating cost per customer?
What rights did Carma have to ingest and reuse customer data from PAYGO companies, telecoms, and other databases?
Which parts of the stack were software-only versus services, and how much gross margin did each component generate?
Was the company already integrated with any PAYGO operators, and if so, which ones and on what terms?

What founders can take from the Carma deck

A seed deck in this category needs to connect sector pain directly to unit economics, as Carma did by linking default risk and operating cost to EBITDA.
The strongest part of the deck is the operational wedge: underwriting plus collections plus payment processing, not just generic SaaS.
For infrastructure startups, showing how you improve existing systems without replacing them can reduce adoption friction; Carma explicitly said it was non-contradictory to BPM platforms.
Market timing claims are stronger when tied to concrete industry adoption signals, such as named operators and visible market expansion.
A pitch about alternative underwriting data must explain where the data comes from and why it is trustworthy enough to drive credit decisions.

Carma pitch deck: common questions

What did Carma say it did in the deck?

The deck positions Carma as software and services for PAYGO solar companies, with underwriting, debt-collection, customer-data aggregation, and payment-processing modules. The pitch is that these tools should improve margins and reduce default risk for solar home system providers.

What round was this deck used for and how much was Carma trying to raise?

The OCR indicates the deck was a 2018 seed raise, and the source page is a SlideShare copy of the pitch deck. The deck itself includes a financing plan slide with staged fundraising, but the OCR excerpt does not reliably expose a single final ask amount, so that specific amount cannot be verified here.

Who was Carma selling to?

Based on the slide text, Carma’s stated customers were PAYGO solar home system companies, PAYGO integrators, telecoms, loan-tracking entities, and top-up/payment agents.

How did Carma describe its differentiation?

The deck argues that existing PAYGO BPM/CRM platforms were not direct competitors to Carma’s credit-risk and collections focus, and that Carma’s edge was non-proprietary data cross-validation plus call-center and payment-processing infrastructure.

Who founded Carma?

The slide text names Ted Martynov as founder and says he was co-founder and former CEO of SolarHome, with prior consumer-lending and tech-startup experience in Eastern Europe. I could not verify additional founder or company-history details from the retrieved live sources.

Sources

Funding and outcome facts on this page were researched on 2026-08-21 from the pages below.

Carma pitch deck slides

Carma pitch deck slide 1 of 13 — Carma pitch deck — slide 1 of 13

Carma pitch deck slide 2 of 13 — Carma pitch deck — slide 2 of 13

Carma pitch deck slide 3 of 13 — Carma pitch deck — slide 3 of 13

Carma pitch deck slide 4 of 13 — Carma pitch deck — slide 4 of 13

Carma pitch deck slide 5 of 13 — Carma pitch deck — slide 5 of 13

Carma pitch deck slide 6 of 13 — Carma pitch deck — slide 6 of 13

What each slide of the Carma pitch deck says

Slide 2

Purpose CARMA provides credit risk management and payment software as a service for PAYGO companies

Slide 3

Problem "Companies that have entered the PAYGO SHS segment have yet to achieve profitability, though some claim to be en route to becoming EBIDTA-positive by 2018 or 2019. While gross margins per unit are high in the sector, operating costs related to serving PAYGO customers are also high, depressing EBITDA." reported by GOGLA in 2018

Slide 4

Solution CARMA provides software and services to: * Aggregate customers data footprint collected by PAYGO companies, PAYGO integrators, telecoms, loan track record * Provide underwriting and debt collection software as a service * Improve data validity with cross-checking at different databases * Provide payment processing software for internal top-up solutions integrated with security and underwriting modules for top-up agents management

Slide 5

Why Now 1-2 Suppliers 3-5Suppliers M 5+ Suppliers Uganda Cote d'Ivoire** OGE, Lumos, Global, PEG Africa® Fenix Int'l Fenix Int'l, Azuri, d.light, Kingo Energy Pakistan Nizam Bij, Ecoknergy Finance A Over forty PAYGO players are present on the market in 2017 10+ startups go live every year Potential market: 2 million units sold annually by PAYGO companies Saas solutions conquer the market. Angaza the CRM platform manages millions of accounts

Slide 6

Market size I EE EE EE ET ET ETE ET 230 430 804 1504 2813 5259 9835 18392 343% 64314 60 112 210 392 734 1372 2566 4798 8972 16777 9 17 3; 59 110 206 385 720 1346 2517 3 5 9 18 33 62 115 216 404 755 0% 0% 0% 5% 1s% 25% 35% 40% 40% 40% 0 0 0 il 5 15 20 8 161 302 * sales and revenue projections provided by GOGLA CARMA focuses on Tier 2 companies on the initial stage and expands to Tier 1 companies after piling up 30,000- 50,000 data sets to deliver data cross-validity services

Slide 8

Competition * No direct competition for End-customer Credit Risk Management * Potential competition: * PAYGO BPM platforms — Angaza Design, Solaris Offgrid, PAYGEE by Mobisol * Lending platforms CARMA advantages: * Non-contradictory to existing BPM platforms * Provides build-in call center and payment processing infrastructure * Focuses on qualified solutions for credit/retail/payments risk management * Uses non-proprietary data for cross-validation

Slide text above is read directly from the Carma deck PDF embedded on this page.